black culture Category Archives

It’s a blessing when two of your heroes are also your colleagues. Check out this CBS piece on Grammy-winner 9th Wonder and Duke Professor Mark Anthony Neal. I’m so proud of what these two have accomplished. They are an inspiration for artists/academicians in general, and for Durhamites/North Carolinians in particular. Shine on, brothers.

Forty Seven years ago today, Malcolm X was assassinated. Activist, Journalist and Durham resident Lamont Lilly reflects on Malcolm’s enduring legacy in this piece, entitled: We are Malcolm X - This in Remembrance.
“It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of black against white, or as a […]

I wrote the title track to MK Asante Jr’s award-winning documentary narrated by Maya Angelou, The Black Candle. Produced by Derrick Hodge with Robert Glasper on piano and Chris Dave on drums. HAPPY KWANZAA YALL!

Close your eyes and imagine you are sitting inside a small family-owned diner in Harlem.
It’s almost 5 o’clock in the morning. The year is 1929. A young man with a flour-dusted apron places a warm, sweet potato waffle and three seasoned fried chicken wings in front of you. It smells delicious. He leaves, then […]

Aaron McGruder’s notorious animated series, “The Boondocks”, has been engaged in radical critiques of black culture, black political formations and black identity politics since its 1996 inception in The Diamondback, the student newspaper at the University of Maryland. “The Boondocks” has grown from a student newspaper comic strip to a nationally syndicated television series that […]

This Black Music Month our interview is with professor and public intellectual Dr. Mark Anthony Neal. We discuss the role of the public intellectual, Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks and Dr. Neal’s contribution to Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas’s Illmatic. Enjoy!

This April marks the 42nd anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the good folks at Build the Dream (dot org) are working on building a National Memorial in his name. They have raised over $100 million dollars and are only about $14 million away from their goal. The memorial will […]

I apologize for my absence in what seems like almost a year. Teaching high school english and history, freelance photography, and getting a non-profit up and running is 90-100 hour a week commitment . I am much better with saying “no” and have carved out more time for writing.
I’ve had a lot […]

Historicizing “heroes” has proven to be a tricky business for black folk in America, that is, when we choose to undertake the endeavor at all. Oftentimes, our proclivity to re-imagine our icons is nothing more than a static idolatry that fails to account for the full complexity of the individuals we claim to acknowledge. We […]

For the progeny of slaves, English has had the dubious utility of being a key granting access, or more often than not, it has been the rhetorical device making black folks the butt of cruel jokes augmenting bitter ridicule and scorn in the psyche of America’s popular culture. From the Constitution (which asserted that black […]